Downeast woods, jobs and global warming

By Bill Beardsley, former Maine commissioner of conservation
The Ellsworth American
November 24, 2017
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US East

Bill Beardsley

The Downeast woods are where jobs and global warming are wed. For starters, Hancock and Washington are among the most forested and privately owned counties in the nation. …Consider CO2. Our school curriculum teaches us CO2 is a food and fertilizer for our forests, affirmed by the Maine Forest Service with its forecasts of high annual growth rates in our young Downeast working forests. …Globally, Maine’s forest economy also has reason for hope. The newly expanded Panama Canal, for example, allows super containerships to carry Downeast forest products from Eastport to Shanghai in a third less time and a third less distance, and China has no trees. …Finally, forest economists correctly observe that the forest industry sector has one of the highest job and economic multiplier effects of any industrial sector in the world, far above service and recreation sectors.

Read More